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Another photograph shows an empty bar with a row of stools where merry drinkers once sat and chatted are now covered in orange rust.

Thirty-two people were killed when the ship ran aground in the seas near the Tuscan island of Giglio in 2012, making it Italy's worst maritime disaster since the Second World War.

After a rock carved a hole in the side of the ship and flooded its engines, the 144,500-tonne liner listed a trapped passengers inside. The captain of the cruise ship was sentenced to 16 years in jail for manslaughter.

Francesco Schettino, dubbed 'Captain Coward' after he fled the ship before the 4,200 passengers were safely ashore, was handed the sentence last year in Grosseto, Tuscany.

A court heard that Schettino was a ‘reckless idiot’ who had been showing off to a waiter on board the ship, and a friend on Giglio island, when he steered the ship close to the shore on the night of January 13.